Visual Diasporas in the Feminine: The Case of Aurore de Sousa (original) (raw)

Abstract

In ‘Who Needs “Identity”?’ Stuart Hall concludes that ‘identities are never unified . . . never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions.’ According to Hall, then, identity needs to be thought of as a production, which is never complete, but always in process. A processual notion of identity has been central to the development of Diaspora studies, as indeed Homi Bhabha’s emphasis on postcolonial subjects as placed within ‘a cultural hybridity that entertains difference.’ Also important is the suggestion of cultural identity as constructed in and through representation, which, at the same time, can be part of ‘those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.’ Cultural representations should thus be understood as hybrid forms, embedded with differing points of view on the world. Framed by the previous theoretical debate, in this chapter I intend to analyse contemporary visual artwork by Aurore de Sousa, a Portuguese-French artist, within the context of her migrant experience, in order to discuss the effects of that dissemination in the visual construction of a fluid and plural sense of identity. I argue that the intercultural space which this woman inhabits has led her to the questioning of the opposite terms identity and difference, location and dislocation, home and foreign, past and present. Moreover, I also want to put forward the notion of a gendered Diaspora by looking at what, in the works under consideration, is influenced by an experience lived in the feminine. In particular, I will look at the way this artist conflates motherland with the mother’s body and tries to re-establish a maternal genealogy.

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